The train now arriving is the 13.20 from 1979

I am well aware it isn’t the most original of titles but it pretty much sums up where we are.

At the back of the 1970s I bought a new camera and later added a dark room.

The pictures were all a bit hit and miss because I was a tad lazy with timings for both the developing and printing.

So while some might stand against anyone’s, others are hazy, lack definition and can either be too light or too dark.

That said they are a record of just what things were like as the 1970s pulled to a close.

And so here I was on Piccadilly Railway Station watching a rain arrive.

I have no idea what type of locomotive it is or even where the train had come from.

During the early part of the decade I had regularly travelled south with British Rail but by 1979 this was less frequent.

More recently I was back on the station and was transfixed by the smooth looking locos of today, so in celebration of what we had and what we've got now, here is one I took over 30 years after the first.

Same station, possibly same platform just separated by the decades.

And thirteen years on from that picture of two Virgin trains ...... taking  the strain from Manchester to London it is now as much a part of the past as the train from 1979.

Location; Piccadilly Railway Station

Pictures; Piccadilly Railway Station, 1979, 2013, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking for cows, farm buildings and a milkman on Brookburn Road in 1927

Now I am the first to admit that you would be hard put to fit this wooden door into the history of a farm in Chorlton.

Outside the stables circa 1920s

But this is the stables of Brook Farm which dates back to at least the late 18th century and was still a farm of sorts in the 1920s.

The farm stood on Brookburn Road opposite the school, and the stables was sited on what is now the playground beside the new bit of the school.

I can’t be sure exactly when it was demolished but it may have lingered on into the very early 1970s finally being knocked down to make way for the school which of course means there will be people who remember it.

I missed it by just a handful of years but Peter Mcloughlin has vivid memories of the stables and the farm which for a big chunk of the last two centuries was also a dairy.

Peter’s father worked there for twenty or so years from the early 1920s and as you would expect amassed some fascinating pictures of the place.

I had already been interested in the farm and have begun to track the tenants who ran it from Mrs Lydia Brown who was there in the 1840s, through to the Holland family and Mr and Mrs Cookson who were still there in 1911.

After that the chronology gets a bit hazy but by the 1920s the diary belonged to Mr Charles Boden and later became Dobson’s  before becoming Express Dairies.

At which point we have reached that moment in time when my own sons will be able to talk confidently of the milk yard across from their school.

Letterhead from the 1920s

During its time under the Boden’s the business expanded to include branches in Eccles and Stockport and after the last world war Peter’s father became manager at the Daisy Bank Dairy on Brinnington Road successfully expanded the number of rounds.

This is a bit of the history of the farm I knew nothing about which is all the more remarkable given that it is recent history.

Bits of the farm’s story from the 19th century are fairly easily accessible, so I know how much land Mrs Brown was farming in the 1840s, where it was located and its usage.

Added to that I can track the families who ran the farm for the rest of that century using the census records and street directories and it will be possible to crawl over the old rate books and get an idea of the value of the farm.

I even know that in the October of 1865 Mr Holland reported a case of cattle disease on his farm which
turned out to be “the only case in this division of the county.”*

And we do have the odd photograph of the farmhouse which had nine rooms making it a substantial building.

At Brook Farm, 1920s

But the evidence trail for the period after 1911 is more difficult to find and so Peter’s pictures and memories are important.

At which point I could become pompous and slide into a series of observations of how much of our collective past we let slip away.

But I won’t, instead I shall just thank Peter, promise more stories from his collection and just make the appeal for any more photographs or stories of the farm.

Which just leaves me to offer up a hostage to fortune and ponder on the building in the background of this picture of Peter's dad and Mr Boden at the farm.

I think it is the rear of the Bowling Green which when our photograph was taken was still relatively new having replaced the old one which dated back to the 18th century.

So there I have said it and await the comments.

Pictures; from the collection of Peter McLoughlin

*Manchester Times Saturday October 28, 1865

In Blackheath in the summer of 1977

Now there is a story here about the history of the postal service.

But that is for another day.  For now I shall ponder on what Tranquil Vale in Blackheath looked like in the summer of 1977.

Just a decade before I had whiled away many happy hours in the bookshop opposite the Crown, and a bit before that as a very junior member of the Charlton Park Rugby Club had spent my fair share of money in that pub on a Saturday after the game.

Not that my sporting career was either very long or distinguished.  It had started when a PE teacher at Samuel Pepys suggested that some of us might like to progress from school rugby to club rugby.

I think I lasted half a season having spent most of the games pummeled by the opposition which was the lot of a 15 year old turning out against men in their 40s.

And all of which is a diversion from our picture, which  is not so different from today.

Of course in the intervening forty-nine years, the House of Tranquility and Two Steps have gone, but the pub is still there, although I do have to confess that I was a tad disappointed when we visited the Crown a year or so ago.

It had gone the way of so many and become open plan and had lost something of the intimacy I remember when you could wander off into small rooms and hide from the curious.

Nor to my mind does the outside seating do much for me.

But then it is easy to judge a place from the high ground of nostalgia, so I shall shut up and ponder on the story of Blackheath’s postal history which with the help of my friend Jean I shall return to later.

Picture; from the collection of Jean Gammons

When Mr. Bradshaw ignored All Saints Church on Blackheath

You would have to be pretty mean spirited to ignore that church on the heath.

It stands on the southern edge of Blackheath, was described by Pevsner as looking like a model, surrounded on all sides by grass* and has links to Sir Arthur Sullivan and Gustav Holst.

Not that Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building. **

For those who don’t know, Mr. Bradshaw compiled railway timetables and guides to Britain and beyond, the first of which came out just eight years after the first passenger railway company had started conveying people and goods from Manchester to Liverpool.  And before that he had published his “Maps of Inland Navigation” which described the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

And despite dying in 1852 Bradshaw’s Guides continued to be an essential part of many traveller’s possessions well into the 20th century.

I have dug out my London Guide book for 1862 and as you do turned to the five chapters devoted to south of the river, and in particular that one on Greenwich.**

Many of my childhood haunts are here, from Eltham where I grew up to Greenwich, Woolwich and Shooter’s Hill, including a reference to the Sun in the Sands.

But Blackheath is relegated to one sentence which leaves out the fine buildings, the church on the heath or the railway station which in 1861 was just eleven years old.  

Instead, the reader is taken out of Greenwich Park and presented with just “we pass on to Blackheath, where Wat Tyler assembled the Kentish rebels in the reign of Richard II, where Jack Cade and his fellow insurgents are said to have held their midnight meetings in a cavern which still remains, though so chocked up as to be considered nearly in accessible”. 

Perhaps Bradshaw’s researchers reckoned that All Saints Church was still too new to be worthy of a mention.  After all it had been opened just four years before the London guidebook became available, and construction work continued until 1867.

Still these pictures by Chrissy go a long way to correct Bradshaw’s omission.  They were posted last week on her excellent Facebook site devoted to photography. ****.

Location; Blackheath

Pictures; All Saints Church, Blackheath, London, 2023, from the collection of Chrissy Rose.

 *"Puginian … already old fashioned, ........ Remarkable for the way in which it is placed right into the heath. Surrounded on all sides by grass, it stands as if it were a model." Pevsner, Nikolaus 1983. The Buildings of England: London 2: South. pp. 412–413.

** Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building, 1862

***Bradshaw’s Guides, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Bradshaw%27s%20Guides

**** The Photographic Gazette, https://www.facebook.com/groups/973270840174059

Who laments the passing of the old milk machine?

It is as much a piece of history as the Penny Farthing bike or the old fashioned tram.  

I am trying to remember when I would have used one.  I suppose it would have been after the pub in those years when I was a student and living in a bed sit in Withington.

There used to be a milk machine by the Scala Cinema which in turn was beside the White Lion. And I guess it would have been that bit of forward thinking about milk for breakfast which would have got me using it.

But then without a fridge and with most shops having closed by nine in the evening buying your emergency milk from a machine made sense.

Of course getting the cartoon open was another matter.

All of which  got me thinking about the age of the vending machine which I assumed came along in the 19th century.

And there I was wrong, there is a reference to one in the first century when Hero of Alexandria came up with a machine to dispense holy water.*

The first modern one was introduced onto a London street in the early 1880s and sold post cards.  For me the first I really remember were the Five Boys Chocolate bars usually on railway stations and which could be guaranteed to deliver slightly dry flaking chocolate which had gone white at the edges. There were also the polo mint machines and the chewing gum ones.

Along with the cigarette machines they were just one of those bits of street furniture you took for granted.  I don’t really remember when they began to disappear to be replaced by the giant all glass fronted multipurpose dispenser.

As for the milk vending machine I rather think they began to vanish in the 1970s, possibly in the wake of the supermarket revolution along with cheap fridges.  For who would want to stand at what was often a shabby and knocked about machine, fumbling for the sixpence only to discover the coin had got stuck, the machine refused to accept it or worst still there were no cartoons left?

This one was on on Shude Hill and was photographed in the March of 1960 which may have been at the height of their popularity.

I suppose they fitted into that new high tech way of life that was the late 1950s and 60s, and I have to say that thinking back to the period it does look ultra modern and there was something novel about getting your milk this way instead of from a milkman.

Not of course that the milkman visits many houses anymore and I hear today that one more newspaper is about to turn itself over to an electronic version.

As someone who grew up in the 50s thinking that milk delivered to the door step along with a daily newspaper was the hall mark of civilized life this all seems a little sad.

And if  I don’t stop I am in danger of sounding like my uncle who still could not bring himself to accept the fall of Constantinople.

Pictures; vending machine on Shude Hill taken by L Kaye, March 1960, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m59879, m59878, m5987, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The story of one family in Chorlton ........... part 4 working at Brook Farm in the summer of 1927

It is easy to forget that just two generations ago we still had a number of independent dairies here in Chorlton and stories of being sent for milk at the farmer’s door is only now passing out of living memory.

Mr McLoughlin outside Brook Farm, 1927

The Bailey’s down at Park Brow Farm, Mr and Mrs Riley on Beech Road in the 1960s and Mrs Lomax at Hough End Hall two decades earlier were part of a local industry which stretched back into our rural past.

By the 20th century the dairies had lost most of their land but go back fifty or so years and most of them were part of bigger operations centered on cereals and market gardens.

And that brings me to Brook Farm which in the 1870s had been the home of the Holland family who farmed 54 acres and employed three men.

It stood on the north side of what is now Brookburn Road opposite the school and dates  from at least the late 18th century.

Brook Farm circa 1900

Back in 1847 the radical journalist Alexander Somerville stopped at Brook Farm and reported his conversation with Lydia Brown the tenant farmer who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Mrs Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

It was my old friend Lawrence who came across the orginal newspaper story and set me off researching the farm and more recently I have Peter McLoughlin to thank for offering up a wonderful collection of photographs of his father who worked at the dairy during the 1920s.

The Farm and dairy in 1927

Most of the pictures show Mr McLoughlin at work delivering milk and that makes them unique, because so far there are very few pictures of people at work here in the township and those we have tend to be by professional photographers who included workmen more by accident than design.

Now I can say that because they do not tend to be the subject of the photograph, rarely are caught up close and are never referred to.
But Peter’s pictures are different and they also record those working places which were unlikely to sell as postcards.

So I return to this one which includes part of the farm and dairy in 1927 and in the fullness of time will return with another showing the stables opposite the farm which is now part of Brookburn School.

Pictures; Mr Jim McLoughlin outside Brook Dairy in 1927, courtesy of Peter  McLoughlin  and the farm house circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 161 .... avocado, sweetcorn, mango and a dollop of Vesta curry

 The continuing story  of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Five foods on the plate, 1948

I wonder how many of these would have featured in the diet of Joe and Mary Ann during their time in the house.

To be fair they were here for just under 60 years and as Britain’s eating habits changed during the 20th century, they may have encountered all five.

But I wonder because by 1970 I had only come across peas and beetroot. True as kids we did get pasta, but it came served with milk and sugar and was a treat, so I guess it doesn’t count.

Mango, 2022

And me, and Joe and Mary Ann won’t be unusual in the absence of peppers, pasta and sweetcorn.

In my case I can remember the first time I came across sweetcorn, pasta, mangoes and even curry.  It was as a student in 1970 that I first had sweetcorn, and a good few more years before I ate pizza, and pasta and not till the 1990s that mango and avocado featured on my plate.

As for curry, in the late 1960s that was courtesy of Vesta Curry, that mix of rice, dehydrated chopped beef and vegetables in a spiced curry sauce.  The boil in the bag rice was cooked while the “other” bits were added to water in a saucepan and simmered away for about fifteen minutes.

Mum replicated this with a home-based mince version which was heavy on raisons, light on the curry powder and came with heaps of rice.

The pizza you make at home, 2024

My first experience of an authentic curry would wait until I was a student in the 70s and went for the three course businessmen’s meals which most Asian and Chinese restaurants offered up at lunchtimes for the staggering price of just three shillings, [15p].

Avocado, 2022

Even more exotic were the salads from the Ceylon Tea Centre in St Peter’s Square, where cold spiced rice vied with bowls of diced fruit, shredded carrot and portions of peppers, peas and meats which were oceans away from the plates of tomato, cucumber on limp green lettuce of my youth.

Leaving the delights of  pizza and pasta to the Bella Napolli on Kennedy Street in the mid 1970s.

Now there is a point to all this which is less a nostalgic trip and more a reflection of just how fast our eating habits changed, under the impact of raising living standards, the push to processed foods aided by advertising, supermarkets  and the hunt for new products from the world’s cuisines to which can be added the fridge and home freezer.

All of which made it possible to move away from the daily trip to the grocer, the butcher, the fishmonger and green grocer, to shopping for the week, secure in the knowledge that it would remain fresh  and allow you to offer up more “interesting” meals along with the quick convenience foods like fish fingers, and that amazing invention of the TV dinner.

Pasta and borlotti, 2023

Mum discovered TV dinners in the mid-1960s ....all you wanted for a roast meal or fish supper in a tin tray which you heated in the oven. They were expensive, tasted awful but mum liked the idea of novelty.

Happily, it was a passing fad and we returned to deep fried corn beef in batter, plates of peeled Italian tomatoes and bacon which vied with potato pancakes and potted beef and fish sandwiches.  To which I can say other sandwiches were available of which sugar, apple and banana ones were popular.

But our Elizabeth reminded me of a whole set of meals that mother made from scratch from soused herring, heaps of pies and puddings and cakes to die for.

That said sweetcorn, mango and avocado were not on the list and nor I suspect would they have walked through the door when Joe and Mary Ann lived here.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; five foods on the plate, Meta Givern’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, 1948, Chicago, Mango fruits – single and halved, and Ivar Leidus, 2022, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: w:en: Creative Commons, You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work and pizza and pasta dishes, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The simple pasta .... with tomato sauce, 2021

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house